Your A4-Size Business Companion: Choosing the Best Compact Notebook. Part I. Page 32

Today we would like to offer you the first article in the series devoted to the compact notebook solutions from the leading laptop designers and manufacturers. The models from Acer, Dialogue Technology, Fujitsu Siemens, IBM, LG, MSI, and Samsung boast unique personality, excellent features, small size and weight. Hope this series of articles helps you make the best choice!

Performance Analysis

I already published the results of each model in their appropriate sections and commented upon them, so I won’t repeat myself again. I will just show you some tables and diagrams that should speak better than words. Here’s the information in a nutshell:

And if you imbibe information better when it is packed into a visual format, here are the overall scores from PCMark04:

I want to say just a few words about the overall scores the notebooks received in PCMark04:

The models based around the Pentium M processor are beyond competition in the first three diagrams – they occupy the first places of the Overall performance and CPU performance diagrams. Following them at a distance of about 30% is a group of low-voltage processors with frequencies up to 1.2GHz. The exotic processor in the Dialogue FlyBook A33i and the down-clocked Pentium M ULV in the Samsung Q30 are at the bottom of the diagram.

The results of the graphics subsystem benchmark are generally indicative of one thing only: this class of notebooks is definitely not meant for playing games. On the other hand, what gaming performance could you expect from integrated graphics cores? The single exception is the MSI MegaBook S270 model that PCMark04 failed to appreciate rightly. In reality, this notebook allows you to play some quite advanced 3D shooters with comfort.

The hard disk drive performance subtest should be regarded as pertaining to the particular sample of the notebook we tested in our labs. It is possible that the next batch of such notebooks will come with different hard drives inside, maybe excepting the small-format exotic products like the Dialogue FlyBook A33i.